A&M `Win' Spurs Texas-Sized Tumult

Published 4:00 am, Tuesday, January 18, 2000

NOT OFTEN is a team officially awarded a victory while sitting at the airport awaiting its flight home. And not often does the winning coach conduct his postgame interview on a cell phone from the team bus that's on the road. And, contrary to everyday propriety, Texas A&M coach Melvin Watkins proved that, in college hoops, it's best to leave the scene of the crime immediately.

It happened on Saturday, when a basket that apparently came after the final buzzer provided the winning points in Texas A&M's 88-86 victory over Texas Tech in Lubbock, which was also the site of a controversial ending between the two teams six years ago.

The upshot of Saturday's game was that the Aggies got their second Big 12 Conference road win in four years, and official Charlie Range, a Menlo Park resident who frequently works Pac-10 games, was suspended from working Big 12 games for the rest of the season. The sympathetic characters in this melodrama end up being the Texas Tech players, who wiped out an 11-point deficit with less than six minutes left and should have had the chance to win it in overtime, and Range, who made a mistake but had the guts to make and stick with his call in a hostile atmosphere.

Three points need to be made before the whole story is told: 1. Contrary to reports after the game, the officials apparently did not reverse their decision that the basket counted and did not call for an overtime to be played. 2. TV replays could be used to confirm or refute such a judgment call. But they can be used only to determine whether a clock malfunctions or whether the clock was started or stopped appropriately by the timekeeper. 3. Range was not suspended for the call itself, but for his actions after the call, actions that seemed to make sense but go outside the rules. He will continue to work Pac-10 games.

A little history. Six years ago, Texas A&M beat Tech in Lubbock on a controversial call in the closing moments. The irate Tech fans blocked A&M players after the final buzzer, leading to a confrontation with A&M coach Tony Barone and to A&M player Joe Wilbert decking a Tech student.

This time, Tech made a great comeback to tie it at 86-86, before A&M's Andy Leatherman rebounded an airball and put in the follow shot. Replays showed it was clearly after the buzzer, but Range, the lead official, ruled that it counted. Watkins immediately took his team off the floor and to the locker room, while the crowd went into hysteria and Tech coaches and officials argued passionately with the refs.

The refs got together to talk about it, at which time the scoreboard, which still read 86-86, put up 5:00 on the scoreboard to indicate an overtime would be played. That roar caused Watkins to come partway out, and Range met him in the tunnel.

Watkins told the Dallas Morning News that Range told him the following: "He came to me and said, 'I made the call, I made the correct call, and I'm sticking by it.' He said, 'I may lose my job, but I'm going to live with the call I made.' "

Although, the Big 12 did not specify why Range was suspended, the conference said it was for not following protocol. The problem may well have been that exchange with Watkins, held without the other coach present, even though hauling Watkins back to courtside to explain the situation may have created bigger problems.

After that talk, Watkins hustled his team out of the building. Several Aggies players apparently did not have time to shower, and the A&M radio team, which travels with the team but was still trying to sort out the end of the game, was left behind. The A&M bus pulled out at 7:25, 15 minutes after the game ended. The team arrived at the airport with nearly three hours to wait for its charter flight back to College Station.

It was from the bus that Watkins' postgame comments were made to the media, via a cell phone. Meanwhile, the controversy was still raging on the court, with Tech players and coaches and nearly half the crowd of 10,000 still in the arena. Eventually, the A&M athletic director and coach James Dickey went to a side room to discuss the issue with officials, and the other two game officials reportedly said they questioned Range's call on the shot. At 7:55, 45 minutes after the final shot, an announcement was made that the final score was 88-86.

UCONN'S NATIONAL TEAM: Connecticut is the only unbeaten women's team, and, unlike the unbeaten Syracuse men, the Huskies have done it against a monster schedule. Yesterday's 15-point victory over No. 11 Rutgers was UConn's seventh win over a team currently ranked among the top 18.

The Huskies still play Tennessee at home and have to face Rutgers on the Scarlet Knights' homecourt, but the Huskies are starting to stack up as one of the best teams in recent years. That's no easy task considering Tennessee went unbeaten just two years ago.

The Huskies are by no means a local team. Only one of its 13 players is from Connecticut, and she virtually never plays. The other 12 players come from eight different states and two foreign countries (two are from Canada and one from Russia), and Oklahoma is the only state that has two players on the team.